Julia Scheeres, Wired Magazine: As part of an ongoing attempt to clamp down on Internet speech, the Chinese government sentences five members of the Falun Gong religious group to prison for posting an article critical of authorities.
In its ongoing repression of Internet speech, the Chinese government has sentenced five Falun Gong members to prison for posting an article to a discussion board that accused authorities of mistreating a jailed colleague.
In a terse news story, the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, stated Feb. 19 that a court in western Chongqing found the three men and two women guilty of “vilifying the government’s image through spreading fabricated stories on persecution of cult practitioners” and had given them prison terms of five to 14 years.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that monitors free speech worldwide, has called for the release of the now 22 Falun Gong members imprisoned for publishing news on the Internet about the outlawed spiritual movement…